will consider the problem of foreign
influences upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early
history of the world.

In Egypt, as until recently in Babylonia, we have to depend for our
knowledge of Creation myths on documents of a comparatively late period.
Moreover, Egyptian religious literature as a whole is textually corrupt,
and in consequence it is often difficult to determine the original
significance of its allusions. Thanks to the funerary inscriptions and
that great body of magical formulae and ritual known as "The Chapters
of Coming forth by Day", we are very fully informed on the Egyptian
doctrines as to the future state of the dead. The Egyptian's intense
interest in his own remote future, amounting almost to an obsession, may
perhaps in part account for the comparatively meagre space in the extant
literature which is occupied by myths relating solely to the past. And
it is significant that the one cycle of myth, of which we are fully
informed in its latest stage of development, should be that which gave
its sanction to the hope of a future existence for man. The fact that
Herodotus, though he claims a knowledge of the sufferings or "Mysteries"
of Osiris, should deliberately refrain from describing them or from
even uttering the name,(1) suggests that in his time at any rate some
sections of the mythology had begun to acquire an esoteric character.
There is no doubt that at all periods myth played an important part in
the ritual of feast-days. But mythological references in the earlier
texts are often obscure; and the late form in which a few of the stories
have come to us is obviously artificial. The tradition, for example,
which relates how mankind came from the tears which issued from Ra's eye
undoubtedly arose from a play upon words.

(1) Herodotus, II, 171.

On the other hand, traces of myth, scattered in the religious literature
of Egypt, may perhaps in some measure betray their relative age by the
conceptions of the universe which underlie them. The Egyptian idea that
the sky was a heavenly ocean, which is not unlike conceptions current
among the Semitic Babylonians and Hebrews, presupposes some thought and
reflection. In Egypt it may well have been evolved from the probably
earlier but analogous idea of the river in heaven, which the Sun
traversed daily in his boats. Such a river was clearly suggested by the
Nile; and its world-embracing character is reminiscent of a time when
throu